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Sunday, March 23, 2014

reflection on project 2 : Forgotten English

Ah, that didn't go as well as I expected.

I should have made the instructions clearer, but I chose experimentation and decided to see if people could pick up what to do just from a demonstration. And it worked! Except that the demonstration by itself offered no way for anyone in the audience to know that the definitions weren't supposed to be read.

Whoops.

I also felt that the way I was too imperious. Commands were an integral part of the last performance, but here such a style was superfluous. Maybe I didn't need to read over everyone's shoulder? I was just trying to make sure I knew when to take the notebook back and do the conclusion.

I'm not certain what I was doing with the opening monologue. Maybe that was unnecessary too. What I was going for was a fluxes-inspired music, the music of old English words, long forgotten -- in our practice earlier that morning, Haley said that the words we were working with sounded interesting. See, there's music in our lives every day.

The notebook is a found object in the stye of John Cage, because I rediscovered it after losing it for a few years. The words in it are also found objects, because I rediscovered them while looking for what was int he back. I forget why I added them in the first place.

As for the length, the piece went on so long because I had all the weird old words interspersed with more ordinary ones, and I wanted to include all my favorites and I couldn't alter the notebook or re-write it without changing its nature.

2 comments:

I love the concept for this piece, and I think it is easily adaptable for live art night. But I want more silliness! I think that more obscure words, and perhaps greater play with the structure of the piece would be nice. I also think the leaders have the power to control the manner in which we undertake the pronunciation of the words as audience members, if you pronounce things slowly or authoritatively it will influence how we will try to pronounce them. I really like this piece, keep working!